VolunteerMatch

I came on here to write this review to represent the organizations that DO benefit from VolunteerMatch. This is the number one way I find people to join my native wildflower seed collection initiative. I did notice yesterday that there is a pattern to some of the "interested potential volunteers" that come through, and after reading this review, I realize that these are probably scammers - scammers that I never hear from because my volunteer project doesn't involve any exchange of money - people just show up to collect native wildflower seeds. Anyhow - yes, I think on any website, there will be scammers, unfortunately. So we all just need to keep our wits about us. But VolunteerMatch is legit, and my volunteer-based program would have folded without it.

They require you to login and give them quite a bit of your personal information to look at volunteer opportunities. Really!

Some of the non profits looking for volunteers have Executive Directors making $200K off the backs of volunteers.

As an organization, I have been posting our volunteer needs on VolunteerMatch.com for some five plus years. The volunteers we get are amazing, we are blessed thanks to VolunteerMatch.com. The one thing I have learned since being in the nonprofit business is you cannot be all things to all people! There are a lot of people out there trying to make money off of the nonprofit organizations and VolunteerMatch.com is not one of them. In addition, every concern I have ever submitted to the organization has been responded to the same day and to my satisfaction! I consider them to be a great asset to the nonprofit world!

I went to VolunteerMatch.org to volunteer tutoring for homeless children. I was asked to provide my personal info with a premise I will be provided info as to where to go etc. Instead, after I provided my personal info, which a do very rarely, I was displayed an input box to type in a message (!) to VolunteerMatch. Frankly, that feels either like a scam or a very purely run organization. Shame on them.

My review was negative and was flagged by the ornanization. It was looked at and found acceptable, so it was left up. The ornanization then appealed claiming that I was "airing personal grievances." My review and those of five other people were removed without any notice or explanation. I contacted the site and explained that while I did have negative personal feelings towards certain people in the organization, my review was about the work of the organization and how well it fulfilled (or didn't) its stated mission and not to get personal. I did not get any substantive response. It seems that once these review sites cave to the pressure to have negative reviews removed, they don't feel the need to explain, work out a compromise, or even be basically courteous.

So far there have been two+ scammers trying to scam my nonprofit organization on volunteermatch.org. They would contact me and ask if I could send them my organization letterhead and they would fill in the volunteer service hours for their school or college. The first scammer said they need volunteer hours for college, then she changed her story she needed volunteer hours for a court order it was required, and when I asked her what is the lawyer's name she came back never mind it was not for a court order. The spelling in her email was off.

2nd scammer was pretending a college student at a local college and she might have taken a student's identity and pretended to be that student and she wanted my organization letterhead.

I contacted volunteermatch.org about these issues and they do not care at all they allow these scammers to get right with things I told them campus police are involved and volunteermatch.org said they never heard anyone scamming nonprofits on volunteermatch.org

It's pretty darn normal for site to ask you for your info.
They need a name to call you.
Organizations need a way to contact you.

The process was like 2 minutes. They aren't asking you for your SSN or stuff like that. Heck, they asked less stuff than Facebook or Google does.

I'm setting up a profile to recruit volunteers and I agree with the site's policies. I go through the simple questions and give them my legal nickname.

I really would rather not disclose my nonprofit event info to anonymous people. Nonprofits arent flea markets or craiglist. We need trustworthy people, concrete ways of communication, and dedication.

I feel like if you're up to some sneaky stuff, going on the site cus you wanna anonymously harass nonprofit events, then you would be scared about giving away a name and phone number.